The Linux kernel has reached a level of maturity where it mostly goes unnoticed and acts like an "invisible magician in the background", according to Linus Torvalds.

"I think the pressure has been off the kernel for a long time now because a lot of the new features have been about userland and most people haven't even noticed the kernel.

"The kernel should be pretty much the invisible magician in the background -- unless things go wrong and hopefully they don't," said Torvalds.

When asked of the kernel has hit a level of maturity, he said: "We are still working on a lot of stuff and especially new hardware. On the whole a lot of the basics are there. What we work on is better maintainability, improving the code so that we can add features more easily and occasionally adding a feature that some people care about but most will not even notice."